These final seconds of Ponting's career as an active Test player were like a curtain call.

A slow but cussedly disappointed walk to the pavilion punctuated by a pose fit for a statue maker.

Stationary but not to the point of lingering, legs slightly apart, bat and helmet raised, facing the people.

It was one final grand and unfussed gesture, followed by a typically spritely departure from the ground then a quick ascent to the privacy and the silence of the dressing room.

A few minutes earlier the game had paused for one of those spontaneous moments of ceremony that cricket does so well.

As Ponting made his way to the centre for the last time, the crowd as you could have predicted rose as one and applauded him all the way, then in a way you could not have predicted the South African team formed a guard of honour and applauded him to centre too.

A quick handshake or two with his South African opponents and then it was in to battle one last time.

It's the type of gesture that'll live long in the memories of those watching or listening. An era and a great career concluding together.

It's said of Don Bradman, to whom Ponting is sometimes and erroneously compared, that his own final Test innings was affected by the tears in his eyes generated by the warm reception and the three cheers he received from his opponents on his way to the middle for his final knock in 1948.

Bradman, as clinical as he was, would rarely have allowed emotion to enter his thought process at the start of a Test innings. Maybe on that day he did.

Ponting is no sentimentalist, just a driven, hard-bitten competitor with an enduring appetite for runs.

The emotion of today and the regretful sentiments of failing when his team craved one more masterpiece will be swirling around his mind as we speak.

In Ponting's case the circumstances of his departure override the scale of his innings today, his career as monumental as that final unforgettable gesture.